Tuesday, September 01, 2009

she slumbers not nor sleeps

I was part of a traveling choir for a couple of years in college. We sang all over Tennessee at dozens of different churches. Our director was a fun guy. One morning we were visiting a hoity-toity church that had a couple hundred people in their regular Sunday morning choir. Anyway, their anthem was a stuffy Mendelssohn piece that has the phrase "He slumbers not nor sleeps" over and over in it. It's a pretty song, but even the most articulate choir sounds like they're saying "he slumber snot, he slumber snot, he slumber snot nor sleeps" instead of "slumbers not, slumbers not". So we giggled throughout the anthem because the upper echelon sang about snot in church.

The perky baby you see above was proud and posing this morning, less than 30 minutes from waking up after being in the crib for about 10 hours. She's not sleeping that long, mind you - she's still getting up every 2-3 hours (occasionally 4-5, but only occasionally) to eat. But she goes right back to sleep after eating without any to-do.

She's not napping at day care, either. They say she'll go down for 10-20 minutes tops while she's there. On the weekends she naps great for me - will stay down for no less than an hour in the morning and an hour to two in the afternoons... It's true - this baby is a busy-body; she'd rather see what all the other kids are into instead of taking her nap. The day care lady told me it was my fault because I worked during my pregnancy.

One of the doctors I work with (who is not a pediatrician, by the way), says that she's waking up in the night because it's a habit. We should just let her scream. I think I'd be for that if she didn't drink 4 ounces of milk every time she woke up... This doctor also says we need to keep the baby up until 7pm before letting her sleep because that's what she needs to do... keeping her up will make her take better naps in the day.

Which we tried last night. But she was really fussy today at day care. Took one 10 minute nap.

This reminds me very much of dealing with the newborn. Some people said you should "make her wait" for 2 hours (or whatever time it was) before feeding her, even if she's crying that she's hungry. We did that for one afternoon before deciding that a hungry baby needs to be fed.

I'm starting to feel the same way about a sleepy baby. If she's tired, and so long as she doesn't move to confusing her day-time and night-time routines... what's wrong with letting her sleep?

As you can see below, she does sleep. Just not for long periods of time.

Konked.

Yesterday I had to go out and get some cool-weather clothes for the baby. I had one pair of cotton pants that fit her like capris. I found a sale and bought several 12month pants and some tops, too. Her 6month clothes are too short for her; we figured this out two weeks after we pulled out all of the 6 month clothes we had in the closet for her (most of which she won't get a chance to wear at all!). The 12month ones are roomy, but at least they don't cut her in half to button them over her torso. She was so proud of her pants, too - as evidenced by that big grin in the picture. (Or maybe she was grinning because she can go a long time sitting up before face-planting onto the bed.)

Or maybe she was just rested and full and happy. And, really, what else is there? You know, other than singing about snot.